Annex 5 - Specificities for local authorities and associations

What are the particularities of an organisation's Bilan Carbone® for local authorities and associations?

Why an annex dedicated to associations?

Annex 5.1 - Specificities for associations

The associative sector must combine two imperatives: reduce the carbon impact of its activities while continuing its essential social utility in a low-carbon world. Although associations, like businesses, generate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is sometimes difficult for these actors, often engaged on ecological or social issues, to know their own carbon footprint.

Reducing emissions does not necessarily mean reducing associative activity, but optimising practices to lower environmental impact, reduce dependencies on carbon-intensive activities, and thus minimise vulnerabilities and ensure the sustainability of associative activities.

The motivations of associations to initiate a carbon accounting approach can be grouped into four main categories:

1

To meet stakeholders' expectations

Whether internal (responding to the internal aspirations of employees, volunteers, members or board members), or external (differentiating themselves with partners and beneficiaries of the association, meeting transparency needs of private or public funders, feeding the environmental reporting of actors in the association's value chain).

2

To anticipate risks

Identify vulnerabilities related to the carbon footprint (dependence on fossil fuels, physical impacts), as well as the risks and opportunities related to the transition to a low-carbon world (regulations, subsidies, reputation, etc.)

3

For a need for coherence with the association's values

Bilan Carbone® helps strengthen the association's raison d’être and its alignment with its convictions, and the feeling of “doing its part” at its scale for the ecological transition.

4

To benefit from a key indicator for an overall assessment

The carbon indicator makes it possible to measure and guide action, to complement social and environmental evaluation approaches, and to reconcile social impact and respect for planetary boundaries.

These motivations reflect a quest for coherence, responsibility, and resilience, common to other types of organisations, but adapted to associative specificities.

The specificities of associations make it essential to adapt the Bilan Carbone® approach to their operational and organisational realities:

• Limited resources : Associations often operate with limited funding, which restricts their capacity to invest in complex tools or training. Implementing a carbon accounting approach therefore raises questions about mobilising internal resources, whether time, budget or skills. The small size of many associations further accentuates this challenge.

• Structuring of skills: The dynamics of associations, which mix volunteers and employees, generate specific issues around steering the approach, implementing actions, and handing over skills. This situation raises the question of the association's progression in its maturity journey.

• Boundaries and flow mapping : Mapping the activities of all actors (employees, volunteers, beneficiaries) is one of the specificities in the carbon accounting of associations.

• Diversity of activities: Associations' activities vary considerably, ranging from organising local events to managing international projects, with specific issues around access to data or identifying emission sources. Furthermore, associations' intervention sectors are varied (culture, sport, humanitarian, health, environment, education, etc.) and sometimes require cross-checking information from the corresponding sectoral guides.

• Diversity of profiles : Some small associations operate mainly thanks to volunteers (possible difficulties related to turnover of skills, informal governance or a lack of means to evaluate their impact). Others, made up mainly of employees, resemble conventional businesses (variable involvement of Boards of Directors). Associations structured around a specific project sometimes face a lack of emission factors, while large national associations must manage a multiplicity of emission sources. Finally, network heads and advocacy associations must address specific issues related to their indirect impact.

• Social and environmental actions : Quantifying these positive contributions remains complex, and does not exempt them from induced emissions.

• Data collection: Some cases are relatively specific: donation, recovery and reuse practices (monetary or material) are less traceable than conventional purchases, beneficiaries are more difficult to survey (health, social or humanitarian sectors), etc.

This annex is the result of reflections carried out with a Working Group on thecarbon footprint of associations, created specifically by ABC (Association for Low Carbon Transition) and the Tilt Movement. This Working Group brings together experts from the associative sphere, witness associations, carbon accounting experts and institutions.

The annex makes it possible to adapt thesteering of a Bilan Carbone® approach within an association. Its ambition is to strengthen the move to climate action in the associative sector by relying on an adapted and accessible methodology, collectively designed to respond to the specific challenges of this sector. It constitutes a methodological reference for practical tools aligned with the realities and specificities of this sector. In addition, a sectoral approach of the General Carbon Plan helps clarify the accounting phase by providing practical, concrete advice for quantifying an association's carbon emissions.

These methodological deliverables are intended for associations under the 1901 law declared in France. If other public-interest structures (such as foundations) or non-French associations wish to take up thesectoral approach, they may do so, without guarantee that this approach will fully suit them.

Why an annex dedicated to local authorities?

Annex 5.2 - Specificities for local authorities